Reuters

UVALDE, Texas (Reuters) – The gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers at a South Texas elementary school was able to enter without any confrontation, authorities said on Thursday, contradicting earlier reports that a police officer engaged him outside the building.

Salvador Ramos, 18, crashed his pickup truck outside the school at 11:28 a.m. (1628 GMT) on Tuesday, fired several shots at two bystanders across the street and walked into an unlocked door of the school at 11:40 a.m. (1640 GMT), Victor Escalon, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, told a news conference.

Escalon said officers arrived and entered the school four minutes later but took cover after Ramos fired multiple rounds at them. He barricaded himself in a fourth-grade classroom, where he shot his victims, mostly 9- and 10-year-olds, in the deadliest U.S. school shooting in nearly a decade.

An hour elapsed before a U.S. Border Patrol tactical team breached the classroom and killed Ramos, Escalon confirmed, a timeline that has prompted questions about whether law enforcement could have intervened sooner.

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